Gay Canadian penguins set to split for breeding programme

Post your comment

Reader comments

The best way to save them is to stop overfishing, stop spilling oil in their habitat, stop taking their nesting spaces away. I doubt force breeding two gay penguins in a zoo are going to save the species. Have they not seen happy feet FFS.

A 1999 review by researcher Bruce Bagemihl shows that homosexual behavior has been observed in close to 1500 species and for 500 of them, it has been well documented. These studies have been peer reviewed and published in Science Daily, The New York Times or you can access National Geographic Online for a wealth of more information. Homosexuality or homosexual behavior (courtship, sexual play, sexual intercourse, long-lasting pair bonds) has been observed in animal species ranging from bison to bottle-nose dolphins, dragon flies to penguins. In nature gender is also a diverse field with hundreds of genders repesented, gender switching animals, hermaphrodites and assexual organisms.

With so much evidence that nature favors sexual DIVERSITY not sexual UNIFORMITY, you would think the religious hatemongerers would have gotten the message through their THICK SKULLS that what is “unnatural” is to expect 7BILLION intelligent creatures to fall in love and express their gender and sexuality in the EXACT SAME WAY.

Lol you hoping, they are fighting to have intelligent design taught along side evolution because they dont understand the scientific meaning of the word “theory”. They are so backwards they are anti-nature lol

By the same token, animals in male/female pairings aren’t heterosexual… they just haven’t encountered same gender animals!
I always find this argument lame… and it’s not like it hasn’t been proven again and again that even when there are hetero alternatives freely available and within striking distance your gay sheep, lesbian bonobo chimps and gay dolphins will still pair off with their own gender.
If that’s not gay then I must be straight.
And 40+ years ago they were using the same bollox argument to pretend gay people just weren’t aware of the existence of the opposite sex. Yep, that must be it, we’re all cut off in some single sex hermetically sealed bubble with no access to mates of the opposite gender. No agenda here.

There is such a thing called ‘prison sexuality’ where people forced to live in a single-sex enviorment sometimes find comfort in each other. It is estimated that one in seven of the prison population show gay tendencies compared with about one in twenty on the outside even though gay men are no more likely to commit a crime than straight people (except before 1967 when being gay in itself was a crime in the UK). Prison sexuality is also observed in captive animals kept in a single-sex enviorment and the article does not mention whether there are females kept in the penguins’ enclosure along with the gay penguins.

I would say that you can watch any wildliffe doc you like and if it’s male on female action, the voiceover intones “bonding, lifelong commitment, settling down and raising a family”, show a similar scene with a couple of female bonobo chimps or two rams going at it hammer and tongs and it’s “they’re establishing heirachy, this is power play, they’re locating the other’s scent” anything to avoid the proverbial gay elephant in the room.
Funny how we only get antsy about anthropomorphism when there’s matching chromosomes between the rutting animals.

Regardless of whether sexual behaviour in animals is between the same gender or mixed, I don’t see that it is relevant to humans. I can see the argument that there are likely to be parallels with sexual behaviour of other primates – in particular the great apes, since humans are also great apes. However, I do not see any relevance in the emotional context of same sex behaviour in penguins, hedgehogs or fruit flies. The concern for these penguins is based on projection of human emotions on penguins, who are really only going to be capable of experiencing penguin emotions. I don’t think I’m getting antsy about it – just that I think issues such as religious opposition to equality for gay people should be taking priority over fluff like this.

Help stop the Toronto Zoo from separating Buddy and Pedro by signing the petition below (addressed to Joe Torzsok, Chair of the Toronto Zoo Board). Forcing Buddy and Pedro to mate with the opposite sex will not make them straight, and they have the right to be with a partner of the same sex, just like humans do.

Gay penguins? Why is it that some people say that homosexuality is unnatural when every other species from antelopes to zebras are at it. Or are humans not supposed to enjoy sex? As a gay man I do not find women sexually attractive and trying to pair gay penguins off with opposite sex partners is doomed to failure. Now that’s unnatural. You can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.

You have a damned cheek accusing others of not reading posts before replying. NOTHING in Gingerycolours’ post justifies the inference that anything animals do is morally justified if human beings also do it. He/she is simply pointing out that homophobes are being factually innaccurate if they appeal to ‘nature’ as a means of condemning homosexuality; they almost always mean by ‘nature’ the non-human but living world, and homosexuality actually abounds there. There is nothing in the post to suggest endorsement of ‘nature’ as a moral guide per se. This is made explicit by the reference to the penguins, where ‘unnatural’ is clearly used to indicate the incoherence in the ‘nature-appealers” position. The reference to the horse-and-water idiom shows that the larger point is pragmatic, not moral.

This is not necessary, and yes, I think it’s cruel. They should be just as concerned about their animals emotional well being as their physical ones. Please sign the petition, link found in Amelia’s comment.

If they’re such wonderful penguins, shouldn’t it be a good thing that they have the opportunity to spread their genes and diversify the gene pool with their wonderfulness? Who knows, it may lead to more Buddys and Pedros.

As Chef from South park observed, you can’t teach a gay dog straight tricks. This misconception always comes from the underlying misconception that gay animals and gay humans alike have never encountered the opposite gender (that and a bit of heterocentric prejudice that they need fixing somehow).

I am so upset – they should not be separated !! See the like-example of the two reunited elephants at the Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary. Animals form certain bonds with others just as humans do – it is a wonderful thing and when it happens they should be left together. Animals are at our mercy.

Same-sex pairing has been observed in all sorts of social animals and animals which form strong couples, from cheetahs to swans. People deny these pretty banal facts because they think the ‘natural’ world must validate their prejudices. Oddly enough, they don’t usually appeal to ‘nature’ to give moral validation to frenzied promiscuity (chimps and most ungulates) or devouring your young in lean times (bunny rabbits). I once had a terrier-whippet cross bitch the love of whose life was a whippet called Jane. When Jane died, she almost pined away. Animals are just as varied as we are.

At first I thought the issue of these penguins did not matter and took this article very light heartedly but on reflection, it really goes to the heart of issues of gender identity and sexuality.

For years my family would argue with me that homosexuality was unnatural. Why? Because they thought so and whatever they felt was natural was natural and there is no way homosexuality was natural (very circular argument to engage in!).

Just as LGBT history is important to show that LGBT people always existed and are not a “modern western invention’. So it must be shown that humans are not the only species to show same sex attraction. Same sex attraction is a natural part of the natural world….

Something as small and seemly trivial as these can be very insightful and offer hope to a teenager battling against the tolerance and the homophobia/transphobia of his/her family.

Milky –
In these contexts, ‘natural’ = ‘any assumptions I want to put beyond the pale of questioning’. With rare exceptions, such people will not stigmatise celibacy, contraception or IVF as ‘unnatural’, because they don’t excite their prejudices.

No I don’t. But if, as many religious conservatives try to do, one stupidly attempts to condemn human homosexuality on the grounds that 1 – animals don’t do it and 2 – animals are a moral guide, then 1 – falls on matters of fact, whatever you think about 2 -.
This is why Gingerly colours brings up animal behaviour. The post is merely a riposte to the daft argument above cited. Whether or not human homosexuality is ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’ is irrelevant to the moral question, and Gingerly colours him/herself offers no clear view on that – he/she merely points out the factual flaw in the opposing postition.
Animals wrongly perceived to be homosexual? So what motivates their actions? A desire to have us on? They may not have sexual identities like ours but it seems ridiculous to deny that they feel sexual desire for other individuals of the same sex. This recalls a man who once told me that he wasn’t gay but only enjoyed sleeping with other men. There is nothing wrong with pragmatic labels.
If human love and pleasure and strong and supportive emotional bonds are moral goods, which I believe they are simply because I value human beings, then whatever enhances them without doing disproportionate or avoidable harm is a moral good. People getting it on with others of their own sex fits the bill perfectly well. Notions of ‘nature’ are morally irrelevant, as at many points you suggest.

Re Gingerly colours’ post, you assume a great deal more. I simply find no evidence that his/her post affirms animal nature as a moral guide. It simply points out the empirical flaw for anyone who attempts to do so.
Sigh. You insist on drawing inferences from my posts that they plainly will not sustain. Eating excrement is plainly dangerous and should be avoided. This is why I emphasise the avoidance of avoidable harm. Simple if you put your brain in gear.

Please spread the word to your friends about the petition below to keep Buddy and Pedro together. Every signature matters and we need many to get the zoo to notice us! Thank you to those who have already signed.

We already have 7BILLION people and more than half live in poverty, million do not have enough food or water or live in societies where they cannot even enjoy basic human rights.

Yeah, just keep adding more and more and more.

Animals are smart enough to only breed as their habitat can sustain. But it seems some of the humans on this planet are truly like what the character of Agent Smith (The Matrix) described- VIRUSES who just replicate, replicate, destroy every natural resource, then spread to another area and repeat.

Nobody is looking at anyone to justify homosexuality. But the fact that people seem to brand it unnatural seem unjustifiable. I was taught in biology that man is also an animal and has a recorded history of differences and similarities, now dats what i call natural distribution. I think those heterosexual zoo keepers should be forced to sleep wit a partner of the same sex and report back to me how forceful seperation could be. Let the sleeping dog lie i was told.

PinkNews covers religion, politics, entertainment, finance, and community news for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in the UK and worldwide. Founded to produce broadsheet quality journalism for the LGBT community, we cover politics to theology in an intelligent manner.